Most decades of financial life are forgiving. Earn more, save a little more, adjust next year. Your 60s are different. This is the decade in which a series of one-way doors quietly close: benefit claiming windows open and shut, tax brackets temporarily dip, and healthcare choices harden into long-term costs. None of the five moves below requires wealth. All of them reward attention while there is still time to act, a theme that runs through much of our business and money coverage.
1. Treat Social Security timing as the decision it is
Claiming at 62 is sometimes right — health, work and family circumstances can make it so — but it should never be the default simply because the option appears. Every year of delay between full retirement age and 70 raises the eventual monthly benefit by roughly eight per cent, guaranteed, for life, and indexed to inflation. For a healthy couple, that difference can be worth more than many investment decisions they will ever make. Run the numbers for both spouses together, because the higher earner’s benefit becomes the survivor’s benefit, and check the official estimates at the Social Security Administration before deciding.
2. Plan the order in which you spend your money
Retirement income is not one pot; it is several, each taxed differently. Taxable accounts, traditional retirement accounts and Roth accounts give you levers to pull in different years. Spending taxable savings first, while deliberately drawing some income from traditional accounts in low-income years, can smooth your lifetime tax bill and reduce the shock when required minimum distributions eventually begin. The sequence matters as much as the amounts, and the early retirement years — before benefits and required distributions start — are usually the cheapest years to rearrange things.
3. Use the low-income window for Roth conversions
Those same gap years are the classic moment for Roth conversions: moving money from a traditional account to a Roth, paying tax at today’s unusually low rate, and letting the money grow tax-free thereafter. Done carefully, a series of modest conversions can fill up a low tax bracket each year rather than triggering a large bill in one. The Internal Revenue Service’s Roth guidance explains the mechanics, but the strategy is personal enough that a single conversation with a tax adviser can pay for itself.
4. Close the healthcare gap before Medicare
Retiring at 62 sounds simple until you price the three years of health cover before Medicare begins at 65. Marketplace policies, a working spouse’s plan, part-time work with benefits or COBRA can each bridge the gap, but their costs differ enormously and must be in the budget before the leaving date is set. Once Medicare does start, the related choices — supplemental cover, prescription plans, and the penalties for late enrolment — deserve the same care. Healthcare is the expense most likely to ambush an otherwise sound plan.
5. Put the paperwork in order while it is boring
The final move is unglamorous and priceless: updated wills, named beneficiaries on every account, powers of attorney, and a simple document telling your family where everything is. Beneficiary forms override wills, and accounts still naming a parent, an ex-spouse or nobody at all are astonishingly common. An afternoon of tidying now prevents a courtroom later.
And then, review it once a year
None of these moves is a one-time fix. Tax law shifts, markets move, health changes and grandchildren arrive, and a plan written at 61 can be quietly wrong by 64. A short annual review — benefits, brackets, beneficiaries, insurance — keeps the five decisions above working as a system instead of expiring one by one. Your 60s will not wait, but they do reward people who treat the decade as a planning window rather than a finish line — and you can follow more practical money reporting on our homepage.
